Merkle Reference

This is a TS library implementing merkle reference specification.

Abstract

Merkle references is a cryptographic hash function like SHA-2 or Blake 3 but defined not just for binary input, but generalized for arbitrary data structures.

As such it provides canonical cryptographic addressing scheme for any data without imposing on disk or wire serialization format. In many ways it is similar to content identifiers (CIDs) from IPFS, but it attempts to overcome various limitations as described by a specification.

Usage

1import { refer } from "merkle-reference"
2
3const message = refer({ hello: "world" })
4message.toString()
5//> ba4jcbvpq3k5sooggkwwosy6sqd3fhr5md7hroyf3bq3vrambqm4xkkus
6
7
8// You can also incrementally build a reference using
9// references
10const linked = refer({
11  to: "merkle@reference.link",
12  message
13})
14
15// Resulting reference will be the same as when everything
16// was inlined
17const inline = {
18  to: "merkle@reference.link",
19  message: {
20    hello: "world"
21  }
22}
23
24linked.toString() === refer(inline).toString() // true

IPLD Integration

Merkle references are intentionally implemented to be type compatible with IPLD Links / CIDs and therefor can be used with multiformats library and all the IPLD codecs.

IPLD Link

Merkle reference when prefixed with CIDv1 prefix can be interpreted as valid IPLD Link for data encoded per merkle reference specification.

Multihash

Merkle reference without CIDv1 prefix can be interpreted as higher-order multihash which hashes arbitrary data structures per merkle reference specification.

Multiformat

Merkle reference can also be interpreted as it's own multiformat per merkle reference specification.